One of our correspondents was in Ecuador recently during the TravelMart Latin America and spent some time afterwards filling in the gaps on some luxury hotels we wanted to add. We still have a few more to post, but in the past couple of weeks we’ve added reviews for Quito (Hacienda Rumiloma and Mansion del Angel), Samari Spa in Baños, and Sacha Lodge in the Amazon.

Shortly we’ll have reviews posted for a hacienda hotel owned by a former president and the best place to stay in Cuenca.

Remember, Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar as it’s currency, so rates have remained a reliable bargain over the past few years no matter what has been going on in the world currency markets. It’s nowhere near the forefront on most people’s “must visit” list except for the Galapagos, which is a shame. Ecuador has a lot to offer and it’s a great value at every budget level, including the very top.

See the full list of reviews for Luxury Hotels in Ecuador.

Unless you have a Platinum American Express Card that allows you access to the airline club lounges, you may want to start leaving that card at home.

American Express just announced it is raising its foreign transaction fee from a pick-pocketing 2 percent to a “hand over your wallet” 2.7%—a 35% increase that is pure profit. So if you charge $1,000, Amex takes 27 more of your dollars, even if you’re already paying them hundreds of dollars a year as a platinum card member that has been with them for decades. Many merchants just received a fee increase as well, which means the company is double-dipping to make up for its bad credit decisions over the past year. (It’s not just your tax money that is going toward a bailout.) Plus they skim a profit from the exchange rate as well, keeping a bit for themselves in every transaction. When a company can have three streams of income from a single purchase and still lose money, do the executives really deserve to earn millions in salary?

Right about now you’re probably thinking, “Yes, but doesn’t my Mastercard or Visa card charge a 3% transaction fee?”

Most of them do, with 1% going to Visa/MC and 2% to your issuer. But not Capital One. Standing by their “no hassle” commitment, Capital One won’t pick your pocket just because you charged something on the other side of a border or an ocean. They manage to make money with just two streams of income–the merchants and the exchange rate. A lot of credit unions won’t ream you either.

I’m still carrying my Amex Platinum when I travel to Peru in December, but I’ll only take it out to use the Delta lounge during a layover. The only one I’ll pull out to actually pay with abroad has Capital One stamped on it.

Here are a few more comments on the subject from Wendy Perrin and the FlyerTalk forum.

A while back I pointed to a soap opera of a story on the Yellowstone Club World crack-up. The high-living husband was splitting from his high-living wife and it was throwing a wrench into the finances.

Apparently that was just the start of the troubles. Now that they’ve run headlong into a credit crunch, Yellowstone Club World filed for bankruptcy. If you read the AP story linked here it paints a story of an overextended company run by a guy who lives as big as the billionaire members: yachts, planes, Aston-Martins, and Bentleys for a start.

The club was initially just one ownership club in Montanta, but then Tim and Edra Blixseth started “an international replica of the Montana enterprise but with a steep $1.5 million buy-in fee. Over the next two years Tim Blixseth bought a chateau in France, a golf resort in Scotland, a villa in Mexico and an estate in the Caribbean.”

The Mexico part of that equation was Club World Tamarindo in the Costalegre region of Mexico, south of Puerto Vallarta.  The club pulled out of that arrangement and it’s now just El Tamarindo Beach & Golf Resort. (Which is good news if you want to be a guest there–it’s less complicated now.)

This shows, once again, the perils of investing big bucks in a project where you are a member rather than a real owner of real property. This is the second major bankruptcy among luxury ownership clubs, after the crash of one marketed by Abercronbie and Kent a few years back. Tread carefully.

A story late last week in the Wall Street Journal noted that while air traffic is flat or sinking in nearly every region of the globe, it is up year-over-year in one region: Latin America.

In Airlines Plot Latin America Course, the Journal notes that American, Continental, and Delta were all launching new routes to the region. “International traffic in Latin America has climbed by 12.2% so far this year from a year earlier, dwarfing a global industry average of 3.3% world-wide.”

Travel is up, the Latin American economies are relatively stable overall, and so far anyway, more friends and relatives have been going back and forth.

It’s not all cheery news for travelers though. While the new routes will provide more options, we are apparently all paying more to get to those places.

“Passenger yields, or the price paid by passengers to fly one mile, on routes between the U.S. and Latin America climbed 23.2% in September from a year earlier — far exceeding growth across the Atlantic, Pacific or within the U.S., according to the Air Transport Association. Third-quarter revenue per available seat mile, an industry standard, rose 19.7% from a year earlier for American on its flights to Latin America. At Continental, the Latin America figure was 14.9%.

Also, some routes are being taken out of play when traffic drops. Delta recently cut service to Querétaro and León, the two airports serving the colonial heartland cities of San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato.

The article didn’t address what the Latin American airlines themselves are doing to take advantage of the rising tide. In my trips, they have offered a more pleasant flying experience than the U.S. carriers, and in the case of Taca and Copa anyway, usually at a better price as well.

We recently posted a new feature story on touring the Amazon Rainforest region of Ecuador. You read a lot more about jungle tours in Peru and Brazil—partly because they are marketed more heavily—but there is more to Ecuador than the high Andes and the Galapagos.

Our writer explored the area through the unique Sacha Lodge. Read the feature to get the full story, but this is one of those examples of someone with money buying up land to keep it pristine rather than using it for raw materials or farming. Like Pumalin Park in Chile, the 5,000 acres that make up the lodge’s playground are an investment in nature and preservation.

We’ll also have a full review of the lodge itself posted in a couple weeks, along with other additions to our reviews of luxury hotels in Ecuador.